Civic Illiteracy Won the White House for Obama

It was only 7:15 last Tuesday evening when my daughter, who works in conservative journalism, texted me to say the election was lost. For a painful four hours, I watched the results confirm her early analysis. When it was clear the president would be re-elected and Republican challenger Mitt Romney had lost, I took an over-the-counter sleep aid and went to bed.

On Wednesday, I began a weeklong home improvement bender, drowning my sorrows in a five-gallon bucket of latex paint the color of vanilla creme. But there was no painting over my pessimism about the future.

I didn’t need to watch TV or listen to talk radio to know what happened. I certainly didn’t need to read the endless analyses about ground games and turnout and demographics and the impact of Superstorm Sandy on pre-election optics.

I already knew why President Obama handily won a second term, despite all indications that a plurality of Americans simply are not confident the country is heading in the right direction, or that our president is the man to lead us toward a more prosperous economy and a more secure place in the world.

You see, more than a year ago I wrote the book that explains it all. It’s called “Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left’s Assault on Our Families, Faith, and Freedom,” and in it, I proved our young adults already have been molded to be the first generation of American socialists.

It’s not some wacko conspiracy theory. It’s just research that shows the influence of our education system, media and pop culture have instilled in most young people a lack of understanding about economics and free markets, as well as a misconception about the proper role of government in our daily lives.

Here’s some of what I learned and shared in the book:

Going back more than six years, it’s clear our nation’s college students are largely civically illiterate. According to surveys from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, college freshmen typically flunk a 60-question civics test with an average score of just better than 51 percent; college seniors flunk it with a score of around 53 percent.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, our country’s high schools taught less about the constitution in 2010 than they did in 2006, a trend that continues. In fact, in 2010, only 67 percent of high school seniors studied our founding documents, meaning about a third don’t study our government in the year before they are eligible to vote.